The Crow Remake to Get New Director and Cast Soon | Screen Rant
The long-troubled The Crow remake will press its luck again with a new director and cast. The original film was released in 1994 under tragic circumstances: the accidental on-set death of star Brandon Lee. Now considered Lee's legacy, The Crow became a cult classic and spawned four sequels that drew poor reactions overall.
After the last sequel, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, came out in 2005, the desire for a remake launched discussions with The Crow producer and rights holder Ed Pressman. Over nearly 10 years, numerous directors, writers, and actors came and went. Relativity Media hired 28 Weeks Later director Francisco Javier Gutiérrez to helm the project with Bradley Cooper, Mark Wahlberg, and a few other stars in talks to play Eric Draven. When that configuration fell through, other cast and crew members became attached until Relativity faced bankruptcy and Highland Film Group and Sony took over. Director Corin Hardy and Jason Momoa signed on and nearly created The Crow remake but soon exited the project in 2018.
In an interview with IndieWire, Pressman says he expects to announce a new director and cast in "the near future." While time certainly does not appear to be an issue with the project stuck in development hell, the timeline is still vague. Still, such an announcement does indicate that the producer most likely has people in mind to fill these roles if they are not already signed. Pressman goes on to comment on the property, saying, "The Crow is a kind of anti-superhero, unique to the world of graphic novels." Pressman refers to creator James O'Barr's The Crow, which the 1994 film adapts.
Like with many film and TV projects stuck in a seemingly never-ending cycle of misfortune, a new cast and crew seem more like a way to regain goodwill and hope among fans than any significant sign of progress. If production can advance past talking about the idea of the film, however, Pressman's announcement will be meaningful, especially if the right people are involved. As for his comments about The Crow's presence in the world of graphic novels, Pressman appears to conveniently forget about the multitude of antiheroes that exist in comics, though Draven is among the most poetic and unforgiving.
With projects like Beetlejuice 2 — suffering from a history of failed scripts and uncertain casting decisions — finally getting substantial movement on the production front, it could be the perfect time for The Crow remake to take off. But the cast and crew have to be committed and simultaneously avoid the pitfalls of another bankruptcy or unfortunate delay. Even then, Pressman and his team must navigate the fans and people like original director Alex Proyas, who think a remake is a besmirching move toward the legacy of Brandon Lee. Additionally, in the face of Alec Baldwin's incident on the set of Rust that took the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, an event that tragically mirrors Lee's death on the set of The Crow, Pressman's continued efforts to resurrect the franchise may not be met with the warmest welcome.
Source: IndieWire